She, on her side, gave him such of her confidences as were meet for
masculine ears. Naturally she impressed upon him the fact that his sex was
abhorrent to her in all its physical, moral, and spiritual manifestations.
Septimus, on thinking the matter over, agreed with her. Memories came back
to him of the men with whom he had been intimate. His father, the
mechanical man who had cogs instead of corpuscles in his blood, Wiggleswick
the undesirable, a few rowdy men on his staircase at Cambridge who had led
shocking lives--once making a bonfire of his pyjamas and a brand-new
umbrella in the middle of the court--and had since come to early and
disastrous ends. His impressions of the sex were distinctly bad. Germs of
unutterable depravity, he was sure, lurked somewhere in his own nature.

"You make me feel," said he, "as if I weren't fit to black the boots of
Jezebel."

"That's a proper frame of mind," said Zora. "Would you be good and tie this
vexatious shoestring?"

The poor fool bent over it in reverent ecstasy, but Zora was only conscious
of the reddening of his gills as he stooped.

This, to her, was the charm of their intercourse: that he never presumed
upon their intimacy. When she remembered the prophecy of the Literary Man
from London, she laughed at it scornfully. Here was a man, at any rate, who
regarded her beauty unconcerned, and from whose society she derived no
emotional experiences. She felt she could travel safely with him to the end
of the earth.

This reflection came to her one morning while Turner, her maid, was
brushing her hair. The corollary followed: "why not?"